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The purpose of this paper was to investigate how managers react to their own abusive supervision. Accordingly, this research identified a mechanism that managers may use to make amends for their abusive supervisory behaviors.

Two studies were designed. Study 1 was an online experimental study involving 99 full-time managers in the hotel industry that examined how managers’ internal factors moderated the relationship between enacted abusive supervision and embarrassment. By applying a critical incident technique to survey 235 full-time managers in the hospitality industry in Study 2, the moderating role of power distance belief as a context-related factor was tested. Furthermore, the mediating role of embarrassment between managers’ abusive supervision and their impression management was examined.

Managers who enact abusive supervision may experience embarrassment and thus be more likely to use impression management tactics, such as apology. Moreover, this study revealed the boundary conditions that influence managers’ reaction toward their own abusive supervision.

Hospitality industry practitioners can use the findings of this study as a basis for the development of policies and training programs to promote positive organizational culture and minimize unethical workplace behaviors.

Previous studies in this area have focused on subordinate-centric perspectives; this study is one of the few that has examined abusive supervision from an actor-centric perspective.

Drawing from the appraisal theory, this paper aims to examine the conditions under which abusive leaders experience guilt and suggests that guilt motivates leaders to help followers.

A scenario study with a sample of 285 hospitality supervisors was used to test the theoretical model. Path analyses were conducted to test the three-way-moderated mediation model.

Results show a three-way interaction among enacted abuse, managerial abuse and agreeableness on the guilt: leaders are more likely to experience guilt over their enacted abusive supervision when they do not perceive their direct manager as abusive and when they are agreeable. Moreover, guilt mediates the relationship between enacted abuse and a leader’s intention to help their followers.

This study shows that abusive supervisors pay an emotional cost for their enacted abuse (in terms of guilt).

Hospitality organization should assign non-abusive mentors to leaders, especially agreeable ones, to detect and reduce abusive supervision.

First, this study addressed the lack of research on the effect of abusive supervision on the abusers by studying the conditions under which abusive leaders experience guilt. Second, this study shows that because of guilt, abusive leaders have a higher intention to help their followers. It explains why abusive leaders can be helpful.

Drawing on attribution theory, this study aims to examine how and when abusive supervision affects insubordination, focusing on employees’ attribution bias related to leader gender.

Two mixed-method studies were used to test the proposed research framework. Study 1 adopted a 2 (abusive supervision: low vs high) by 2 (leader gender: male vs female) by employee gender-leadership bias quasi-experiment. A sample of 173 US F&B employees completed Study 1. In Study 2, 116 hospitality employees responded to two-wave, time-lagged surveys. They answered questions on abusive supervision and gender-leadership bias in Survey 1. Two weeks later, they reported negative external attribution (embodied in injury initiation) and insubordination.

Hayes’ PROCESS macro results verified a three-way moderated mediation. The three-way interaction among abusive supervision, leader gender and gender-leadership bias affects external attribution, increasing insubordination. Employees with high leader–gender bias working under female leaders make more external attribution and engage in subsequent insubordination in the presence of abusive supervision.

This study is one of the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, that examines the mediating role of external attribution of abusive supervision. Second, this research explains the gender glass ceiling by examining employees’ attribution bias against female leaders.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of leaders’ attachment orientation and social self-efficacy on the enactment of abusive supervision.

Data were obtained from a sample of leader-subordinate dyads (n=114), and were collected using a Panel Service.

The results show that a Close/Depend attachment orientation was negatively associated with abusive supervision, while an Anxious attachment orientation was positively associated with abusive supervision. Social self-efficacy mediated these relationships.

The results generate a deeper understanding of the etiology of destructive leadership. Applying attachment theory to the study of abusive supervision also offers a new theoretical perspective on potential precursors of this behavior.

The findings suggest organizations might benefit from attempts to alter leaders’ destructive attachment orientations, and by extension, reduce their abusive behavior. It may also be possible to reduce the occurrence of abusive supervision by implementing leadership development initiatives aimed at enhancing leaders’ confidence in their social skills.

By identifying several potential precursors to abusive supervision, this study highlights possible points of intervention to combat a form of leadership that is linked with employee suffering. Thus, the findings can be used to help improve the working lives of those who are affected by this destructive workplace behavior.

Until now, research has not considered leaders’ attachment orientation as an antecedent to abusive supervision, nor has it explored the meditational role of social self-efficacy. The use of leader-follower dyads in this study also helps reduce issues related to social desirability biases and common method variance.

Drawing upon the conservation of resources theory, this study investigates the recursive relationship between abusive supervision and service performance and the moderating role of coworker support in this recursive relationship.

This study tests the model using moderated cross-lagged analysis with a three-wave longitudinal data from 146 hospitality employees who were working and studying in hospitality.

Results support the recursive relationship: abusive supervision impairs service performance and employees with low service performance provoke abusive supervision. Coworker support mitigates the lagged effect between abusive supervision and service performance and that between service performance and abusive supervision.

Hospitality organizations should have a zero-tolerance policy toward abusive supervision. Employees who would like to avoid abuse should improve their service performance and seek coworker support.

This study uses a novel analytical approach to examine the recursive relationship between abusive supervision and service performance. It provides evidence on the bidirectional causal relationship and sheds light on how employees can avoid getting abused. This study is also one of the first studies that examine the moderating role of coworker support on the effect of service performance on abusive supervision.

This chapter provides an overview of research on dispositional supervisor characteristics as well as specific individual-level antecedents, correlates, boundary conditions and processes of supervisors who display hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviours towards their followers (i.e., abusive supervision). More specifically, empirical research findings on the relationships between specific supervisor characteristics and subordinate-rated perceptions of abusive supervisor behaviours are summarized and critically discussed. To better understand what contributes to abusive supervision, the moderating role of follower characteristics and the greater organizational context are taken into account as well. The chapter closes with an integrated process model of abusive supervision, an outlook and suggestions for future research.

The present research aims to empirically test the “Barriers to abusive supervision model” to find how employee-related (core self-evaluations) and situational factors (perceived job dependency) make an employee trapped in the spiral of supervisory abuse. In addition, the work–family spillover lens is used to explain how employees' retaliation is targeted at their families in response to abuse from their bosses.

The current study has employed a three-wave longitudinal moderated mediation design and analysed data from 265 employees working in the hospitality industry of Pakistan.

The results of this study have shown that low core-self evaluations put employees in a spiral of supervisory abuse and they instil aggression towards their families. This association is further strengthened when employees are dependent on their job.

This study is one of the first to use the “Barriers to Abusive supervision” model to answer who and in which conditions tend to trap in the spiral of abuse and integrate the work-to-family interface model for elaborating the outcomes to the family domain.

This paper examines the moderated-moderation model of reciprocity belief and fear of negative evaluation between supervisors' abusive reactions and subordinates' distress.

The authors obtained 412 valid responses from Egyptian hotel employees and analyzed them using PROCESS model 3.

The three-way interaction findings proved that when employees have high reciprocity beliefs and low fear of negative evaluations, the abusive supervision-psychological distress relationship is dampened.

Organizations have the opportunity to implement human resource development (HRD) strategies focused on cultivating reduced apprehension toward negative evaluation and fostering a robust sense of positive reciprocity. To achieve this, HRD and HRM initiatives can encompass elements such as bolstering organizational and coworker support, promoting cultural assimilation and redefining work practices.

This paper adopts a comprehensive approach that recognizes the intricate interrelationships within the workplace by identifying subtle dynamics of abusive supervision and its impacts. It also explores the complex nature of such relationships rather than taking a purely causal perspective.

The purpose of this paper were to investigate whether gendered social media images reduce women’s leadership aspirations (via reduced leadership self-efficacy) and whether state mindfulness buffers the effect of stereotype threat on women’s leadership self-efficacy, and in turn, leadership aspirations.

Study 1 (n = 53) was a pilot study designed to test materials intended to induce stereotype threat via social media. Study 2 (n = 144) was an experimental study in which participants were randomly assigned to stereotype threat or control conditions. Stereotype threat was implicitly induced via a fictional Facebook timeline that incorporated gendered images.

Stereotype threat induced via social media predicted lower leadership aspirations for women, which was mediated by reduced leadership self-efficacy, as expected. State mindfulness moderated this mediated relationship in an unexpected way; stereotype threat effects on leadership self-efficacy and leadership aspirations were stronger for women higher in state mindfulness.

It is important to investigate stereotype threat induced via social media to understand the potential damage gendered images may have on women’s leadership aspirations in a modern advertising context. This research shows that indeed gendered images in social media advertising decrease women’s leadership self-efficacy and leadership aspirations. Interestingly, this study also found that mindfulness had a negative effect in relation to stereotype threat. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.